If only
by DamadiSangue
Summary: "Alex." he calls her, and she jumps - backs away. She curls up on herself, intertwining her hands in her hair and clutching her head between her knees. "Alex." he repeats, and approaches her, discovering her fragile and subtle - destined to break for him.


"You dangle on the leash of your longing;  
your need grows teeth."  
\- Margaret Atwood -

 **If only**

 **#0**

"You must leave the island."  
A red and purple sky; a radioactive and poisonous dawn.  
"Why?"  
"There's no time."  
"Albert."  
The earth trembles, _roars_.  
"There's _no time_ , Alexandra, no more."  
Something shakes the Tower; a chasm that swallows the cries of the _un_ worthy.  
"I'm coming for you."  
Silence.  
Alex swallows, holds the phone to her chest: out, the apocalypse is at its first, _devastating,_ chapter.

 **No one knows what it's like**  
 **to be the bad man**  
 **to be the sad man**  
 **behind blue eyes.**

A too large sweatshirt, too tight jeans; Alex is a stranger in her own body, a skin that dresses a fallen and disgraced god.  
She stares at the tip of her sneakers with an empty, lost look; eyes that Wesker has seen extinguished day by day.  
Alex draws imaginary lines on the dirty floor, repeats them to infinity - suddenly young, _small._

 _My little sister._

A ridiculous nickname for those who had _bent_ fear, horror; for those who, like him, should have _ascended_ , not collapsing into the ruins of his own dream.  
Yet _this is_ Alex now; alone, frightened: nothing more than the sum of all his mistakes, of all his guilt.  
Wesker reaches for her hair, leaves his hand _there,_ suspended between a confession and a regret.  
Alex continues to study the tip of her shoes, indifferent.

 **#0**

"You can't control it."  
Rigid muscles, truths swallowed like broken glass.  
"You can't predict it."  
Wesker stares at her with a shocked face, burning eyes and a skin that is no longer _enough._  
"It got rid of his creator."  
The helicopter shovels break the cries of Sushestvovanie's inhabitants, Stuart a shadow at her side.  
"The son _kills_ his father."  
Wesker shakes his head in a dry, troubled gesture: he leans forward and grabs her wrist - _pulls._  
"There's no time." he repeats, and on his lips it becomes a sentence of death.  
Alex searches for **his** eyes, **his** soul: she finds only a screaming mouth.  
"I can't without ..."  
"You have to." Albert growls, and tugs "I can't bring _anyone_ else."  
"You don't want." Alex replies, and bares her teeth.  
"Master Alex." Stuart interrupts them "It's all right."  
Alex turns, gives him a doubtful, _wounded_ expression.  
Stuart smiles, slightly inclines his chin towards his chest - a greeting, a goodbye; the farewell of a man who had entrusted his life to Alexandra Wesker without any doubt.

"That's all right, Master Alex, I understand the words of Dr. Wesker very well."  
Albert stares at him, looking for the trick - the deception.

 _He finds nothing._

Stuart looks up again, that _stupid_ scarred smile on his aged face.  
"Run, Master Alex: it was an honor to be able to work alongside her."  
Alex writhes in Albert's grip, a vise that leaves her no hope.  
"Take care of her, Dr. Wesker: the world is now a dangerous place for _both_ of you."  
And that's _when_ Alex breaks down - she screams _and_ swears _and_ insults _and_...

 **Crack.**

Behind Stuart the Tower collapses - _disintegrates_ before her eyes.  
The Uroboros advances - crushes, chews, _assimilates_ \- Albert raises her for the waistline and drags her to the helicopter door, hurling her inside.  
The last thing the parasite swallows up will be Stuart and his _stupid_ , confident, smile.

 **No one knows what it's like**  
 **to be hated**  
 **to be fated**  
 **to only lie.**

Ruined brocades, broken mahogany tables; among the ruins of that five-star hotel Albert stares at the window of the bar, still intact, perfect in its wooden and gold edges.  
He scrolls the names of the products one by one (Venchi, Gobino, Bruyerre, Domori, Es Koyama, Hévin) lingers on a white and green box (Ladurée, dark chocolate 75% with blueberries.)  
The world is silent, a void of sounds and noises that makes even his heartbeat a deafening rumble.  
He presses his hands on the window - _crumbles_ it; takes the box in his fingers and studies it as if it could reveal the secrets of his future.

 _A Pandora's box he will never be able to close again._

Behind him, Alex has been ignoring him for two years, one month and five days.

 **#0**

" _You_." Alex hisses, and _burns_ between his fingers - red in her eyes, on her lips " _You_ , great dickhead."  
Albert dodges an angry bite, grabs her wrists and _squeezes_ \- he feels her bones flexing under his strength, fighting him.  
"Let me go."  
The pilot gives a nervous look at Alex, then at Wesker.  
"No."  
Alex's pupil narrows, becomes a crack that swallows all understanding.  
"Let me go _back_." she repeats, and her voice is lowered by a few octaves "I can still do something."

 _I can still save him._

The helicopter jumps in flight, leans to the right, then resumes altitude.  
"You can't do anything anymore."  
Alex makes a dry, harsh sound: a frustrated and distraught yelp.  
"Leave me, Albert, _leave me_ , or I swear I'll break that head..."  
Something strikes them. Something strong enough to move the good-sized helicopter forward.  
Alex falls backwards, Albert follows her.  
"Grab something!" the pilot shouts, and the cockpit turns like crazy wheel "The shock wave of the detonation has just hit us, the sensors are out of order, I'll have to drive it manually."  
Alex frowns, clings to the edge of the hatch and looks for Albert - again, always.  
" _What...?_ "  
Albert is faster (he has already seen it happen) more aware (he is the architect) and grabs her, crushing her against his chest.  
"Albert." she murmurs on his coat, and there is a worried note in her voice, " _What have you done_?"  
Sushestvovanie is erased from the earth by the last, desperate, BSAA attack to the god of the new world.

 **But my dreams**  
 **they are not as empty**  
 **as my conscience seems to be.**

Betty Boop winks from behind a bunch of red roses - is crumpled by nervous and pale fingers.  
There is a fire to divide them - a life of lies and dead words.  
Albert gives her something (blueberry chocolate) and he watches her stop tormenting the figure of Betty Boop.  
"Your favorite." he says, and it's all so ridiculous - so _wrong_ \- that Alex doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.  
She opens the box slowly, studies the sweeties - creams and mousses.  
She puts one in her mouth, then another - she tightens her lips in a broken line.  
They are sweet under the tongue, and they remind her of when the world was still whole and _theirs_ \- a beautiful and murmured promise.  
She raises her eyes, looks for his - waits, _hopes._  
Alex swallows a lump of chocolate and begins to cry.

 **#0**

"You can go." Albert dismisses him, and the pilot a boy _too_ young and whose family has not been answering the phone for _too_ long.  
"Where?" he asks, disoriented, and Alex estimates that he might be twenty-two.  
"It doesn't concern me."  
The helicopter's blades pierce a salty, warm air; Naples and all that remains of Tricell.  
The pilot strengthens the grip around the phone, spits on the ground.  
"Son of a bitch... I knew that _slut_ would have brought us to ruin, but I didn't imagine..."

Bam!

The pilot's head spills backwards, the bullet shelling bits of bone and blood against the cockpit of the helicopter.  
Alex follows a string of cordite and smoke, arrives to Albert and the gun he clasps between his fingers.  
"Gabriel?" someone says on the other side of the phone "Gabriel, are you ok? Oh, please, answer, your sister ..."  
Blurry noises, damp; something that slams - that falls.  
"Lisa is dead, Gabriel, _dead_! Those... _things_ have eaten her! They have... Oh, please, please, _please_ , tell me you're okay... Gabriel, here..."  
Screams, tables turned upside down, a sound of backwash - _disgusting._

 _Mute line._

Alex looks away, searching for Wesker.  
"Where's Excella, Albert?"  
Silence.  
"What happened to Jill?"  
The Samurai Edge trembles in his grip, Albert curls his lips against his teeth.  
"And Chris Redfield? Sheva Alomar? _The BSAA?_ "  
Arm still stretched, stiff posture; everything in Wesker speaks of contraction - denial: of a truth stuck in his throat, under his tongue.  
The horizon explodes, tinged with green and orange.

 _A poisonous and splendid mushroom; the final attack of a humanity now on its last breath._

Alex sees it: she _understands._  
"Why?" she murmures, "Why didn't you believe _me_ , Albert?"

 _Why didn't you trust my calculations, my mind? Why didn't you trust **me**?_

Albert is silent, hardens the line of his jaw.

 _He ignores her._

Those will be the last words he will hear from Alex.

 **I have hours, only lonely**  
 **my love is vengeance**  
 **that's never free.**

Alex keeps crying.  
They are just small sobs, silent tears.  
Pale streaks that wet her cheeks, neck.  
He sees her taking another chocolate and put it in her mouth, lips bent into a painful grimace.  
She cries, and tries not to show him, shrugging her shoulders and sniffling.  
She passes the sleeve of her sweatshirt on her face, hides; inhales strongly, and almost suffocates in her own pain.  
"Alex." he calls her, and she jumps - _backs away._  
She curls up on herself, intertwining her hands in her hair and clutching her head between her knees.  
"Alex." he repeats, and approaches her, discovering her fragile and subtle - destined to break _for him._  
He touches her back with the tips of his fingers, listens to a body now on its last breath.  
The lament Alex releases is the most cruel sound he has ever heard.

 **#0**

It hadn't been a clean apocalypse. Or fast. Or _easy._  
They had fought; they had defended themselves.  
That humanity he despised that much had embraced weapons, hope - _anger_ : everything.  
They had replied to the Uroboros and its _absurd_ claims - against the monster, the Beast.

 _It wasn't enough._

Creating a Containment Area, then a Buffer Zone. To encircling the virus, monitoring it. Avoiding other cases of infection, developing a cure for existing ones - or a treatment ensuring stabilization.

 _Everything useless._

Uroboros had swept away _everything_ \- men, women, children, animals.  
First the sanitary structures (vague symptoms, corresponding to too many general diseases to immediately identify it: fever, stomachache, acid reflux, rash) the police, the army.  
The BSAA had been _destroyed_ \- reduced to its knees and then shot down like a rabid dog.

 _Redfield, Burton, Alomar, Luciani; all names that Uroboros had erased from history as if they had been_ nothing.

Governments had been crushed, powerless.

 _Absorbed by a single mind, by a system that finally worked without imperfections._

Worthy, unworthy; nothing was enough for Uroboros, the world a matrix to correct, a wrong function, a false calculation.

 _You too._

The last man had ceased to exist on 22nd September 2009; it was a Kansas elder man who had survived with a little luck, a bit of experience.  
He had left this world in silence, staring at the picture of his sons and his wife; a cliché that once we would find trivial, obvious.

 _A bad script._

Uroboros had devoured him from the head, a gracious gesture for a virus that had _ripped_ people like they were made of tissue paper, leaving them to agonize in their blood while eating them a little at a time.

 _Education first of all; never chew quickly and always leave something in your plate._

It was a sunny day; Alex remembers him well because she was _there_ \- because they had been _greeted_ by that man.  
Uroboros had left the house crawling, a blackish and translucent slime behind it.  
Albert had tightened her hand all the time.

 **No one knows what it's like**  
 **to feel these feelings**  
 **like I do**  
 **and I blame you.**

"We will die." and it is the first thing she tells him in months - _years._  
"No. _No,_ we just have to get to the old Umbrella laboratories."  
Alex avoids his gaze, closes her eyes.  
"We will not make it."  
Albert stiffens his jaw, perceives his pride scratching, mounting like a storm.  
"And then?" she asks, hands clasped to her chest, asymmetrical breath "And then what will we do, Albert?"  
There is no derision in her words, irony: only a bleak weariness.  
Wesker opens his mouth, closes it.

 _He doesn't know what to say._

"There's nothing left, Albert."

 _It's not true._

"Food, water, basic necessities: Uroboros chews and destroys, nothing more."

 _It doesn't matter._

"Even if we got to one of those labs, hoping they're still working, how long could we survive? Months? Years? _Eternity?_ "

 _I don't know._

"There's nobody left who can help us, even stop us; you've killed _all_ of them, Albert."

 _The hero is dead, Albert; you killed him, on the edge of that volcano two years ago. Do you remember?_

"You won, Albert."

 _And I lost everything._

Alex turns, looks for his eyes - orbits that _burn_ , and still speak of conquest and power.  
Alex is the only beautiful thing left in his arms.

 **#0**

Fugitives, homeless.  
Fallen gods, men without hope.  
Prey, wanted; once again victims, mutilated children, _stripped.  
_ Uroboros leaves nothing behind; neither bones nor blood: only an emptiness without an answer.  
Alex stares at a doll missing one leg, blackish and wet streaks along the skirt.

 _Uroboros._

Maggie smiles from a photo in which she holds a lunch basket in her hands, a pink and white fantasy of Hello Kitty.  
Anne, her mother, raises her thumb towards the camera, Frank, her husband, wraps her shoulders with one arm.  
Normal, everyday scenes: those held no meaning for her.

 _But they did for **them**_ _. For them this was life - the future._

Albert enters the room, shows her a bag full of clothes of her size and clean sheets.  
Alex looks at him and finds herself _too full_ of everything to be able to answer. 

**No one bites back as hard**  
 **on their anger**  
 **none of my pain and woe**  
 **can show through.**

She breathes on his mouth - _lives._  
She gives him a wet, sloppy kiss; hands that touch him after years - he had felt them on his skin just to close his wounds or inflict new ones.  
"We will die." she murmurs, and has the same taste of _always_ \- blood under his tongue, between his teeth "We will die, Albert, and it will all be your fault."  
He touches the nape of her neck, shoulders; he looks for her under the sweatshirt, along her ribs - he counts them, then brushes the small curve of her breast.  
He is consumed by her words, recognizes a truth from which he has now ceased to run away - _inevitable_.  
"I know." he replies on her lips _"I know_ , Alex."  
Alex closes her eyes and stops crying.

 **#0**

Something has _broken._  
Something _has stopped_ working.  
Albert can feel it right _there,_ in the middle of his chest; an acidic spiral that suffocates him with every breath.  
He watches Uroboros swaying out of the restaurant, smelling the air - he has learned that smell is its most important sense.  
Driven by a single mind, indifferent to any other emotion that is not functional, Uroboros is what he had always wanted: cruel, ruthless, unstoppable, selective.

 _So selective that nothing was ever enough._

He is hungry.  
For the first time in months Albert Wesker is _hungry._  
Uroboros ignoreshe is its creator, but has taken his own path - come into existence, advance, fight, kill the father, conquer, trascend.  
Albert studies him from the corner of his eye, moves to the left - the Progenitor a beast to the chain (sad, lonely, _emaciated_.)  
He touches Alex's shoulder, points to the side entrance.  
By his side, Alex is a shadow without consistency.

 **But my dreams**  
 **they are not as empty**  
 **as my conscience seems to be.**

He strips her slowly, as if there was all the time in the world.  
He runs with the tips of his fingers on her skin, shows an unexpected delicacy - _fearful._  
Alex is lukewarm under the sweatshirt - still soft and pale.  
She touches him along his shoulders, on his chest: she searches for his mouth, the pulsating line of his carotid.  
Alex bares her teeth, and tastes him - sweat _and_ desire, ashes _and_ blood, Progenitor, man, god.  
Albert is a desperate tremor along his arms, in the broken breath hides in her hair.  
Alex raises her hips, let him slip her ugly pants, which don't belong to her - but _nothing_ in that life does.  
Naked in his eyes, against his skin: never like in that moment Alex seemed perfect - _worthy._  
She hides her face in the crook of his neck, _clings_ to him - two snakes that find comfort in the heat of each other.  
Albert closes his eyes and _breathes._

 **#0**

There is not much left.

 _Of the world, of_ _ **them.**_

A moment trapped in time; a present that will never change.  
Everything is ready in the restaurant, still set like that night a year and a half ago.  
Someone had prepared the tables for the next round, arranging cutlery and napkins.  
That someone had then laughed at a stupid joke of a customer - the usual latecomer with whom every kitchen has to reckon, sooner or later,.  
That someone had cleaned their hands on the white apron with the stylized S of the banner, collecting her hair in an unmade knot - calling home to find out if it was all right, if Cindy had eaten her spinach.  
That someone had come out of the same glass door against which they are now sitting, summing up the bills still to be paid, the shirt to be collected in the laundry, that low-belly pain that assumed the arrival of menstruation.

 _I wonder if that someone had died before her daughter, or later._  
 _If she had suffered._  
 _If the Uroboros had begun to eat her from the feet or arms. Maybe it had left her in half, like a plate that had gotten cold, or that didn't like anymore._

"Do you want something?"  
Alex stares at a box of tuna without any interest, plunges her hands into the pockets of the sweater.  
Albert sighs, leans the tuna on her side, a jar of peaches in syrup and a packet of graham crackers - all accompanied by a small bottle of water.  
Old Alex would have thanked him.  
Old Alex would have noticed the combination - proteins, carbohydrates, sugars: a _healthy_ diet, after all.  
Albert slips by her side, opens a bag of paprika crips.  
The new Alex is a dead thing just waiting for her body to give up.

 **But my dreams**  
 **they are not as empty**  
 **as my conscience seems to be.**

Fragile, _thin_ between his fingers.  
Alex is a white curve that _flexes_ under his hands, pale lips chapped by the cold - by a dying virus.  
The Progenitor rolls around his heart, among his thoughts; he sings the same song of a life before, a desperate and tragic solo.  
"Kiss me." she asks, and _he does_ , because he has never been her master or of the world.  
"Touch me." she implores him, and _he does,_ because hunger has turned into something else - but it is too late to name it.  
"Kill me." she whispers, and _he will_ , because he has never been able to deny her _anything_ : not even a desire that will defeat him forever.

 **#0**

He hadn't been fast enough.  
Uroboros had surprised them as they tried to enter an old Tricell laboratory, and hadn't hesitated.  
It had stepped forward, tentacles that had become as sharp as blades in a few seconds, full of teeth and prickles.  
The Progenitor had _roared_ \- an old lion never tamed - and had pushed them to move to the right, dodging the first attack.  
Uroboros had waved, a blackish and swollen bladder.  
Master of all, lord of the new world, Uroboros had eyes and ears _everywhere_ \- an extraordinary neural connection that allowed it to hit Alex to the throat and _sink.  
_ Alex had widened her eyes, dilated the pupil: underneath, the Progenitor regenerated, kept intact the venous and muscular tissues - _fought.  
_ Albert had grabbed the tentacle, breaking it in two - picking up Alex and her stunned, frightened expression.  
Uroboros hadn't shouted, cried; a beast that didn't know pain - _perfect.  
_ The Progenitor _explodes_ and launches into its last battle.

 **I have hours, only lonely**  
 **my love is vengeance**  
 **that's never free.**

They will not die as heroes; they will not fall like the villain of the story.  
They will leave in a pathetic, sad way; a footnote, nothing more.  
They will not survive in anyone's memory, because Nobody is the name of the new god, and it has already forgotten them - _erased._  
Alex is stripped of her usual elegance - a mask that allowed her to reduce him to his knees (bent, pleading, _dripping_ ) during a Tricell conference or while Excella celebrated her twenty- second birthday.

 _Armani on her skin, under his fingers; a mouth that laughed at him, at his desire - a girl who acted like a woman and toasted to herself while Alex was_ _ **fucking**_ _her future - dreams._

She is confused, Alex, maybe even embarassed.  
She walks the lines of his body as if was the first time she had seen him, counts the scars his ambition has left - those _she_ inflicted on him the only night he had tried to approach.  
"You should have left me alone." she tells him, and runs with the tip of the index a pink streak that runs through his abdomen "You should have let me _die_."  
Albert stretches under her hands - ready, already hard.  
Alex smiles, tilts her face in his direction.  
"You've always been _so predictable_ , Albert."  
Wesker intertwines his fingers in her hair and suffocates every other replica on her mouth.

 **#0**

Alex has frightened eyes, too blue and too big.  
The wound has stopped bleeding, but his hands are full of it - reddish and sticky smudges.  
"The scar will remain." and it is almost an excuse "The Progenitor is too weak to completely repair the damage."  
Alex squeezes the green sweater between her fingers, opposes a fragile resistance when he replaces it with a Betty Boop sweatshirt.  
First the head, then the arms; Alex is a broken, disarticulated doll.  
He combs her hair with his fingers, loosens the knots that have formed on the ends.  
"Alex." he calls, and _that_ look is still there - empty and transparent like a winter sky.  
"Alex." he repeats, and there's Stuart in her eyes. There is Sushestvovanie collapsing, his broken promises. There are compromises she had to reach, the taste of Excella on his mouth. There are times when she had believed in him ( _stupid stupid stupid_ ) the nights when she had screamed his name - obscenely wet by her desire, by his tongue.

 _His fault, her mistakes._

Wesker puts the hood over her shoulders, stiffens his jaw when Alex avoids his touch for the umpteenth time.

 _He vibrates with an absolute and devastating rage._

"Do as you like." he tells her, getting up and slamming the wet towel to the ground "Let yourself die like a dog for what I care; you've always been a burden."  
And he wants to hurt her, Albert.  
He wants her to suffer; that she reacts. With anger.  
He wants her attacks him. Tries to _hit_ him, _bite_ him, _touch_ him - anything.  
He walks towards the bathroom of the apartment in which they found refuge, he looks at her over his shoulder.  
Alex curls up more tightly on the other side of the bed and remains in silence.

 **When my fist clenches, crack it open**  
 **before I use it and lose my cool**  
 **when I smile, tell me some bad news**  
 **before I laugh and act like a fool.**

She opens her thighs, he licks the pale space between her breasts with the tip of his tongue; Alex is Hera come down from Olympus for her last war - to crumble between his fingers, on his mouth.  
White and gold, Alex _burns_ \- an impossible and cold statue.  
He touches her navel with his forefinger, he slides down - she is already _wet_ and ready.  
Alex, cries and lets herself go on his hand - damp with a desire that had always pushed them to find each other and then get lost, again _and_ again _and_ again _and_ forever.  
There is no noise in the room, except for Alex's voice dying against his skin, the creaking of the wood consumed by the flames.  
"Go on." she asks, and Albert _sinks_ \- he follows her desire, feels it mounting, _tightening_ around his fingers, leaving him _horribly_ excited.  
Alex tilts her head back, offers him the helpless curve of her neck - a reckless act of trust.  
Albert closes his eyes and listens to her orgasm freeing itself and breaking him off.

 **#0**

A handful of rags and bones; this is Alex.  
Her knees bent upward, hands clasped to her chest, everything in Alex speaks of a betrayed trust, a fear that is devouring her alive.  
She breathes slowly, her eyes restless under her eyelids, her hair spread over the worn pillow.  
Albert still watches her for a few moments, suffocates a feeling that makes him feel weak, _exposed._  
He was used to _seeing_ her in red and expensive clothes.  
He was used to _meeting_ her under very dark, narrow skirts, white shirts that were reduced to _nothing_ \- shreds of fabric that concealed an elaborate fantasy of lace and silk.  
He was _accustomed_ to her sharp tongue, her winking smile; moist, shameless thighs, which took and dominated - games of power that were fought in laboratories as between sheets.

 _Wherever they wanted._

This... _thing_ in front of him isn't the woman he remembered: that he _wants_ to remember.

 _The sum of all his errors: of all his faults._

The Progenitor whispers, coaxes, _warns._

 _Don't do it._

The Progenitor knows; the Progenitor _understands._

 _Not him._

Albert Wesker once again shows himself for what he has always been; a god too failed and fallacious to be anything but _human._

 **If I swallow anything evil**  
 **put your finger down my throat**  
 **if I shiver, please give me a blanket**  
 **keep me warm, let me wear your coat.**

Pale and panting profiles; curves that lie between the ashes of a ruined world.  
Alex offers herself to him on the edge of the abyss, _shines_ a step away from the end.  
If he had a heart, he would be _almost_ touched.  
If he had a heart, he would count her ribs with his mouth, he would slip between her thighs with his tongue, his hands.  
If he had a heart, he would kiss the nape of her neck, spilling on her lips all the words that were never said, _aborted._  
If he had a heart he would _suffer_ to see all that matters _broken_ \- lying on a dirty, chipped floor.  
Albert closes his eyes, the muscles under his skin contract - they tremble.  
Alex goes up along his side with her foot, opens up for him - _with_ him.  
The Progenitor is silent - _understands_.

 _For that instant, it let them be just a man and a woman - Albert and Alex; two names. Two lives._

The last night together will also be the one that will free them.

 **#0**

It is the first time he touches her to _hurt_ her; _really_ hurt.  
It is the first time he touches her _in months_ , and he uses the Progenitor to _break_ her defenses.  
Alex contracts her back like a snake in his hands, snatching her teeth - burning eyes, fixing him with an intensity that makes him feel small, _mean._

 _The parody of the god he had always wanted to be._

He clutches her wrists, raises her by the waist.  
Alex bowed herself so violently that Wesker seems to hear two vertebrae popping, an accelerated, irregular breath.  
"Alexandra." he calls, but there is _nothing_ in her eyes - wide open - under her skin the Progenitor is a crazy, drifting virus.

 _A beast which lost all reason._

He searches for a contact point, _any one_ , and it doesn't matter if she feels bad, if she's afraid of him, if he _cuts_ her inner _soft_ thighs - nothing matters, but _feeling_ her, at least one last time.

 _Nothing matters, but knowing you are **not** alone in this world that you have created with your own illusions. _

He clutches her chin between his thumb and index finger, forces her mouth in a kiss that is all teeth _and_ blood - Alex breaks off and bites him so hard to force him back.  
Wesker takes his fingers to his lips, red _and_ wet.  
"Alexandra." he repeats, and it is an explicit threat.  
Alex pants, clutches that ridiculous Betty Boop sweater on her chest.

 _A little, fragile, thing._

"Come." he asks, but nothing is gentle in his voice - nothing is known "I'm losing my patience with you."  
And that's _when_ something snaps, and something goes off in Alex's eyes.

 _She dies._

"No." she replies, and her voice is low, hard: rusty "No, Albert."

 _But I will not stop you. I can't._  
 _I'm weak._  
 _I'm imperfect._  
 _I'm_ _ **un**_ _worthy - a mess of broken DNA and flesh._

Wesker frowns, advances, _tugs_ \- the Progenitor screaming _and_ screaming _and_ screaming _and_ never to be silent.

 _She is_ _ **never**_ _silent._

Alex scratches his face, his neck - he persists, continues, opens her wider, thrusts in her - one time; _just once_ and...

 _No._

One word. One meaning.  
Albert blinks one, twice; he listens to his anger retreat like a sudden maroon, liquefying among his thousand faults.  
And then he looks down, at the details: Alex's trembling hands.  
Her lips dirty with blood. The bruises along her arms, around her neck.  
Her naked breast, her knees clenched.  
Worn-out jeans on her left hips, torn in pieces, wounds along her thighs, between her legs - _around_ him.

 _And blood. So_ _ **much**_ _blood._

He looks at her, and she is _small_ under his body - hands on her eyes, a thin, weak breath between her pale lips.

 _Pain. Mistrust. Suspect._ _ **Fear**_ _._

Alex is afraid of him.

 _Of what he was about to do. About what he did._

He drops her, and Alex slips to the ground, then climbing on the bed and wrapp herself in a bunch of blankets, tight around her body.

 _Never. No. No no no_ _ **no**_ _. Not her. Not my little sister._

Albert swallows sand and glass - _guilt._

 _He collapses._

Alex releases a broken breath, tightens her lips in a thin, crooked line; she closes her eyes and goes back to hiding under the sheets, the Progenitor telling him of a worn, tired heart.  
"I..."  
" _No_." Alex repeats, and he sees her tighten under the blankets "It doesn't matter anymore."  
Albert lets go on a nearby chair, takes his head between his hands.

 _I failed._

The zero point was finally overcome; and he doesn't know if he - **they** \- can go back this time.

 **I have hours, only lonely**  
 **my love is vengeance**  
 **that's never free.**

Swinging between his thighs, against his hips; Alex is red in her eyes, on her cheeks.  
The embers are burning beneath the ashes, infernal fireflies illuminating two _ruined_ , fragmented profiles.  
Albert lifts up on his elbows, brushes her breasts with his teeth, the sensitive part of the areola - _sinks_ , until she releases a broken laugh (the same as a life before).  
Dirty of their faults, their regrets: of a feeling that had burned them both.  
Alex is wet on her skin, between her thighs; he smiles against her shoulder, supports her movements - now more urgent, _violent._  
She lets herself go against Albert's chest, hides her face in the crook of his neck - she listens to the beating of a rotten, corrupted heart.

 _His._

"Alexandra." he calls her, and she answers - Hera and her tragic forgiveness.  
"I'm here." she reassures him, and squints hers eyelids when a particularly intense thrust _melts_ something in her lower abdomen "I've always been there, Albert."  
Wesker closes his eyes ( _understands_ ) breathes her scent - he _comes_ , and clings to her with a desperate force.

 _Heartbroken._

Her name on his mouth is the only thing that has ever really mattered.

 **#0**

Alex _falls._  
She slips on the ice, in the snow.  
Albert suddenly turns, he finds her already standing - her hands clenched against her abdomen, naked and bleeding.  
He frees a breath in half, approaches - and Alex stiffens instantly, bending her body to the right.  
"Here." he says, handing her his gloves "I don't need them."  
Alex stares at them (black leather, slightly worn, padded, warm) biting a cracked lip.  
Wesker waits - _hopes._

 _Will she accept them? Forgive him?_

The snow intertwines in her hair, along the pale eyelashes - a crown of gold and bones.  
"Alex." he murmurs - he prays (he, the god.)  
Alex takes the gloves with a quick, suspicious gesture; the memory of the previous night an infected and suppurant wound.  
Albert doesn't even dare to look at her in her eyes.

 **It is said that memory is to deliver people to immortality.**  
 **No one knows what it's like**  
 **to be hated**  
 **to be fated**  
 **to only lie.**

They say it's memory that delivers us to immortality  
Memories keep us alive; engrave us in history.  
Alex is all that remains of a _non_ \- humanity under his hands, _fragile.  
_ He follows her figure with his eyes, fingers: begging pardon for every wound he inflicted, every scar.  
"Spencer." she whispers when he touches her left breast "When he asked that subject number twelve was _aborted_."

 _That I should be erased from his personal guard: dismissed as an inconclusive experiment, a defective product._

"An accident with a B.O.W, level four." she confesses, and Albert studies a jagged scar on her side.  
"Excella, the first practical tests on Uroboros." she whispers, and Wesker rubs his thumb against the outside of her thigh, following the shattered imprint of a Majini's teeth.  
" _You_." she groans - she flexes under his mouth "The first time." when he caresses a pink streak in the fold of her groin.

 _When the Progenitor was all that mattered - when Raccoon City still existed and with it our future._

He kisses her cheekbones, the pale curve of her neck - she sighs, and she's home again.  
The dust of forgetfulness can now have him without regrets.

 **#0**

Baccarat Hotel; five stars, the best in Manhattan.  
Wesker remembers the heavy crystal chandeliers, the thick carpets, silky under his hands; gold leaf framed mirros, the royal suite (red and white, a bust of Aphrodite on the bookcase, soft light on the walls.)  
He looks at it now, gutted, devoured - nothing survives Uroboros.

 _Not even him._

Manhattan is a rotting carcass, swollen and purple.  
He touches the edge of the table with his fingertips (ebony and glass, a slab that had _broken_ under his hands, on Excella's skin - between her thighs) studies a reddish and infected sky.

Crash.

He turns around, looking for the source of that sudden noise.

 _Alex._

His gloves are too big (so _out of place_ as they slide down her wrists) and the statue must have gotten out of her hands.  
She kneels on the torn carpet, and is picks up the pieces one by one.

 _The snake._

 _A sign_ , he had thought at the time: the absolute invitation of destiny to _come forward._  
Rolled up on his own coils, his mouth wide open, his teeth bared: ever a creature had seemed more beautiful.

 _More appropriate._

He observes Alex, her surgical precision, the obstinacy with which she stares at the floor.  
He approaches, stopping only when he notices Alex's back tending under the sweatshirt - the Progenitore screaming, growling, _refusing him._  
"It's safe." she tells her, and Alex waits - her fingers suspended a few inches from the carpet, her eyes an arctic fissure controlling him.  
"We can stay here, if you want."  
A building collapses in the distance; a terrifying arch of Uroboros and burned bodies emerges from its shrunken skeleton.  
"I'm going to look for something for the fire."  
Silence.

Albert opens his mouth,

 _I'm sorry._

closes it again.

 _I'm sorry._

He would like to say her name.

 _He would like to invoke it. Beg it. Pronounce it as a faithful devotee in front of his god._

He would like to tell her the truth.

 _But lies suffocate him._

He would like to touch her.

 _He wants her to touch him as before - to give him a shape, a dimension with her hands, her gestures._  
 _To tell him_ _ **yes**_ _,_ _ **you're still there Albert. We are both there**_ _._

He would.

 _He can't._

He looks at himself in a lost, broken mirror.  
Eyes marked by fatigue, dripping blood and defeat.  
Dark jeans, a Nike black sports shirt (the kind of Chris would wear.)  
An hollow face, hardened - Death and its tremendous profile.

 _A fallen_ _man_ _god and perhaps never existed._

Alex sat on the sofa not far away, in her lap crystal crumbs and a broken life.

 _A charade that has only_ _ **one,**_ _inevitable answer._

Albert leaves the room, closes the heavy gray door behind him.

 _He surrenders to his guilt, to his mistakes._

The god is **finally** dead among the remains of his own pride.

 **No one knows what it's like**  
 **to be the bad man**  
 **to be the sad man**  
 **behind blue eyes.**

"They are longer." she murmurs, stroking strands of golden hair "You should cut them."  
"I know."  
Alex smiles, and it's beautiful: a reflection of what they _were_.

 _Which will no longer be._

The fire is silent, burn the night - _whispers_ , and tells all of his horrors, black monsters and torn cities.  
"I can do it, if you want."  
"Yes." he tells her, and continues to caress her side with the tips of his fingers "I'd like to."  
Alex widens her smile, inhales against his shoulder - gives him a laugh in half.  
"Will you kill me, Albert?"  
Wesker intertwines his leg with hers, closes his eyes.  
"Yes."

 _I don't want to._

Alex emits a satisfied sound, a murmur that runs _through_ his chest, his heart.

 _I'm sorry._

Albert clenches his eyelids, holds back that annoying sting that threatens to turn into _something else_ \- thanks that darkness is so thick to limits every sense.  
"Do you have other chocolate?" she asks, and he feels her curl up against him, looking for a warmth she'd been away for almost two years.  
"Maybe." he tells her, and uses Betty Boop's sweatshirt as an improvised blanket "I can always check."  
Alex nods, yawns - a _tremendously_ normal gesture.  
"I'd love raspberry too."  
Albert breathes in her hair, presses his hands between her shoulder blades and brings her closer, until they are nothing more than two profiles of skin and muscles that are sought, protected, rolled up in each other.

 _Uroboros: nomen omen._

"Tomorrow."  
"Tomorrow." Alex repeats, and slips into sleep, finally without nightmares - with him, _in him._  
No ghosts will cry for that night.

 **December 22, 2011**

"You promised."  
"I can't."  
"Albert: _please_."  
"No."  
"You owe me that."  
A distant look: _defeated_.  
"Alex."  
One hand to her neck, the other on her chest - _around_ her heart.  
"I can't go on any longer: I'm infected, and you know that."  
Shaking fingers, slipping, shaking again.  
"Can't you resist, Alexandra? For me? I can cure you. I _swear._ "

 _For your brother? Your_ _ **awful,**_ _broken, brother?_

A child alone, desperate: the vanguard of the new world that crumbles, regresses to the most primitive imprint of its nature.  
Alex searches for his mouth, his face; gives him the first, _true,_ smile since _**then**_ _._  
She dies, Alexandra Wesker.  
She dies in his arms - _for him_.

 _Because his faults._

Wesker moves her hair to one side, clears the knots that war and misery had twisted in her long golden strands.  
She has a red flower in the center of her chest, the mark of his shame.

 _Of his weakness._

He holds her on his knees as he did _before_ , caresses her pale and cold face as he did _before_ \- stares at the near wall with a blank, dead look.  
He leaves her alone when there is nothing left - neither pain nor memory: only a dry and sterile desert.  
He gets up and covers her with the only clean sheet he was able to find.  
Dawn rips the night - gets the horizon - his hands - dirty.  
In the end this is the way the gods _die_ ; with the weight of their mistakes on their shoulders and all the words that were never said in their throat.  
In the devastating silence of mute prayers and faithless believers.

 **December 25, 2011**

The system is now perfect, unassailable.  
The Creator is dead: the Creator is now part of the System.  
Everyone will be part of it, sooner or later.  
The hero and the villain, the bride and the widow.  
The brother and the sister, the martyr and the fearful.  
The warrior and the king, the victim and the executioner.  
There is no distinction within the System, there is no war or hunger or disease: there is only Equilibrium.  
The sea roars quietly behind the Beast, green plains and a nature that _lives_ \- conquers, resumes, sprouts.  
A new world; an optimized world.

 _Well kept._

The Creator _knew_ it, yet he had tried to escape his destiny for a long time.  
He had then _understood_ , letting himself be integrated without any resistance.  
Uroboros hadn't been kind to him, and the Progenitor had fought to the end- a Cronus unable to yield to the evidence.  
He had regenerated tissues, organs, consciousness - an endless feast for Uroboros.

 _But it was not enough._

Dismembered, destroyed; the Creator wanted to _expiate._

 _The Creator had to pay._

The Creator had died in silence, crushed by the noise of the many parasite's mouths.  
The cry of the Progenitor had disturbed Uroboros, the new Zeus - the new god who had finally defeated the old man - but soon the Equilibrium had returned.  
There are no more social castes, no differences.  
There is nothing left.

J _udge, jury, executioner -_ _ **God.**_

The Progenitor is finally silent, an obsolete matrix, a product that has already expired.

 _To be thrown away._

Uroboros is, in the end, nothing more than the son of a miserable and pathetic story: the symbol of a feeling _so wrong_ to become the condemnation of an entire world.  
Us, the useless actors of an already written tragedy.

 **"There is something soft and moist about her,**  
 **to give, to rage, an intolerable tenderness. "**  
 **\- Mary Szybist -**


End file.
